Congress earns passing grade on education reform

Fall marks a time when kids return to school and politicians,
eyeing the final stretch of another campaign, spend a lot of time
talking about kids - especially about their education. On this
issue, for the first time in a long time, Congress can talk with
pride.

Take the issue of school choice. In 1992, Rep. Dick Armey,
R-Texas, was laughed at when he introduced a bill that would
provide parents vouchers enabling them to send their children to
any school-public, private or religious. The legislation didn't
even get 100 votes. But when a similar "school choice" measure was
introduced this Congress, it passed 214-208. The measure would have
enabled low-income families in the District of Columbia to free
their children from academically inferior-and frequently
dangerous-public schools. I say "would have" because President
Clinton vetoed it.

The cost of the plan was relatively small and it was targeted to
the poorest of the poor. Called the D.C. Student Opportunity
Scholarship Act of 1998, the measure would have given scholarships
worth as much as $3,200 to the families of 1,800 poor children.
Now, $3,200 may not sound like a lot of money, especially compared
to the $9,500 the D.C. public schools spend per pupil, but it's
enough to cover full tuition at parochial schools like St. Peter's
on Capitol Hill ($2,880) and St. Francis Xavier on Pennsylvania
Avenue ($1,800). Imagine: For the amount of money it takes the D.C.
public schools to miseducate one student, Xavier could provide a
sound education to more than five.

Just what kind of schools did the president's veto condemn D.C.
children to? In 1994, 72 percent of Washington's fourth-graders
tested below "basic proficiency" on the National Assessment of
Education Progress, a standardized test given to students in
different grades every two years. Since 1991, reading skills in
Washington have shown a net decline as measured by the standardized
Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills. Again in 1994, more than half
the high school graduates in the nation's capital who took the U.S.
Armed Forces Qualification Test flunked. And forget college-more
than 40 percent of D.C. students drop out before finishing high
school.

The problem isn't limited to Washington, of course. A 1995
international test showed that in physics American 12th-graders
ranked behind their counterparts in 11 other countries -including
intellectual superpowers like Slovenia, Latvia and Cyprus. On the
same test, American fourth-graders ranked eighth in math. In fact,
only 36 percent of the U.S. 12th-graders even read
"proficiently."

That helps explain why school choice, once considered the pipe
dream of rich white Republicans, has gained widespread support. The
Texas League of United Latin American Citizens, a business and
civic organization, supports it. A poll conducted by Phi Delta
Kappa, a professional education association, shows 62 percent of
African-Americans support it. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Sen.
Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., support it.

Former Rep. Floyd Flake, a New York Democrat never confused for
a conservative, explains his support for school choice: "This is
not a question for me about Democrats or Republicans. It is really
a question about whether or not we are going to continue to let
every child die, arguing that if we begin to do vouchers, if we do
charter schools, what we are in fact doing is taking away from the
public system. … It is like saying there has been a plane
crash. But because we cannot save every child, we are not going to
save any of our children."

Just as important as the growing support for school choice is
the growing recognition that the best way for the federal
government to help education is to step out of the way.

When Congress returns from its summer recess, lawmakers could do
just that when they consider the Dollars to the Classroom Act,
which would send a large chunk of federal education money-$3.4
billion-back to the states as block grants, which would be used for
35 existing education programs.

The aim of the proposal, sponsored by Sen. Tim Hutchinson,
R-Ark., and Rep. Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., is to make sure federal
education dollars do what they're supposed to do-educate children.
Under the terms of the block grants, the states would have to spend
95 cents of every dollar teaching kids. That's a far cry from what
happens now: In New York City, for example, only 43 cents of every
public education dollar makes it to the classroom.

There's still much lawmakers need to do to bring American
education, especially in our inner cities, up to minimally
acceptable levels. But just as a college student needs to pass one
subject at a time to get a degree, Congress is heading in the right
direction.

Edwin
J. Feulner, Ph.D. is president of The Heritage Foundation,
a Washington-based public policy research institute.